


Once More, Dear Friends

by tinydooms



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 05:45:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13540974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinydooms/pseuds/tinydooms
Summary: Cogsworth never talked about him, the young man he had left England over, but he kept a miniature tucked in among his socks, where he could see him every day.





	Once More, Dear Friends

**Once More, Dear Friends**

 

     Cogsworth never talked about him, the young man he had left England over, but he kept a miniature tucked in among his socks, where he could see him every day.

     John Ferrars, his name had been. Captain of the Lightfoot Regiment, that regiment of the army   tasked with keeping the Hampstead neighborhood of London free from highway men and robbers. Cogsworth had joined after he left Cambridge, where it had behooved him as a diplomat’s son to attend. Academia was not Cogsworth’s milieu; he preferred order and action, and a career in the army had seemed both sensible and desirable. And so it had been. The Lightfoot Regiment kept the King’s peace in London, and its soldiers where Henry Cogsworth’s brothers in arms. And John Ferrars, with his laughing black eyes and his sideways grin, had walked straight into Cogsworth’s heart and stayed there.

     It was not so unusual for two sons of minor gentlemen to find themselves drawn together. From the start, they were a pair, Ferrars and Cogsworth, the one as calm and careful as the other was exuberant and daring. By day they guarded the people of the Heath from harm, and by night they frequented pubs, taverns, theaters, the opera. No one thought any the less of them for their love of each other-such unions had been considered normal since King James had taken George Villiers as a lover and made it illegal to persecute gentlemen for such preferences. Ferrars and Cogsworth, who put aside money for the future and bought a little house together, who assumed that because they were young, and strong, and on the side of justice, nothing would ever happen to threaten their life together.

     One bullet was all it had taken to bring Ferrars down. One bullet, aimed at the man Ferrars was standing second for, as he dueled another over an insult. One bullet, that exploded out of a pistol and went wide, shooting Ferrars through the chest, sending him sprawling into the wet dawn grass of the Heath.

     Cogsworth had only just made it to John’s side before he died, lying on the cold wet grass, surrounded by their friends. The words he had  meant to say dried up in his throat as Cogsworth clutched Ferrars’ hand and watched the light go out of his eyes.

     “Henry,” Ferrars said, quite clearly, and was gone.

     The army had accepted Cogsworth’s resignation. The little Hampstead house was sold to a young family; Ferrars’ belongings sent home to his family.

     “Come to us, dearest Henry,” Mrs. Ferrars had written to him after the funeral. “Come stay awhile.”

     He had stayed a while, but it was too much, being surrounded by his dead love’s parents and sisters, and after a while, he had left them and wandered wherever the wind took him, unable to escape the crushing weight of grief for the one he had lost. Cogsworth kept John’s bible, his pistols, and his portrait. And if he drank a little too much, if he slept a little too long, who was there to care? No lover with snapping dark eyes and delighted laughter was there to tease him out of his misery.

     The landlady of the boarding house Cogsworth had taken a room in, out in Greenwich, brought him the letter.

     “There’s a gentleman downstairs, says he won’t leave without an answer,” she said. “Be quick, then.”

     And Cogsworth, without any real desire to communicate with anyone, had broken the seal on the letter and read.

_“My dear cousin Henry,_

_I hope that you haven’t forgotten your Maria-Eleanor, cast away from the glamour of London as I am here at Hartley Park. I do hope you’ll forgive my impertinence at writing-my mother said that you are grieving and do not wish to be disturbed. I beg you to accept my sincerest condolences for your loss, dear Cogsworth. I only met Captain Ferrars the one time, when we were in London for my season last year, but he was a gentleman whom I was happy to call cousin._

_Dearest Cogsworth, I am to be married, and my French fiance, the Prince de Courcy, has agreed to let me bring members of my own household with me to France. I have need of a majordomo, someone to look after me and my household and ensure that everything runs smoothly. I know nobody in France, and confess myself a little frightened; I would take great comfort in a familiar face such as yours joining me on this new adventure. My father arranged the match, you see, and I have yet to meet my betrothed. I beg you, cousin, to at least come to Hartley Park and speak with me on the matter. I wish you joy and remain most sincerely yours,_

_Maria-Eleanor Streatfield.”_

     Cogsworth held the letter for a long time.  _I can’t do this, John._  And John was there, as he sometimes was when Cogsworth was a little tired, a little drunk.  _‘Course you can. What else are you going to do, sit around and mope? The world keeps on turning, Henry_.

     Little Maria-Eleanor, engaged to a French prince. His mother’s cousin, twenty years Cogsworth’s junior, the oldest daughter of Lord and Lady Streatfield. She had indeed met him and Ferrars during her season last year. A pretty thing, with soft golden hair and charming blue eyes, who had kissed his cheek and laughed at his jokes, and wormed her way into his heart with her charm and her great capacity to love. The Prince de Courcy, eh? Cogsworth had heard stories of him.

     He returned to Hartley Park with the messenger. He stopped drinking altogether; he forced himself to rise every morning with the dawn, to take exercise and to manage his young cousin’s move to France. He rose every morning, had a cup of tea, and took care of his cousin, Madame la Princesse, trying to ensure her happiness. One day at a time, one foot in front of the other.

     One day, three years after the birth of Maria-Eleanor’s only child, the new footman caught Cogsworth lingering over Ferrars’ picture, leaning on his dresser.

     “ _Zut alors_ , who is that handsome devil?” Lumiere cried, elbowing Cogsworth in the ribs. “A secret romance, eh, Cogsworth?”

     Cogsworth shut Ferrars’ portrait away. “Hardly secret, Lumiere.”

     “Not unrequited!” the young Frenchman’s eyes were tragic; he really had missed his calling when he chose service over the theater. “How could anyone not love a man like you?”

     He was being teased, and yet Cogsworth didn’t have the heart to play along. Not when it came to John Ferrars.

     “No, not unrequited. He died, my John, eight years ago now.”

     Whatever answer Lumiere had expected, it was not this. He stood gaping, and Cogsworth found himself explaining about the Lightfood Regiment, and the little house in Hampstead, and the bullet that had missed its target and found John instead. For suddenly he needed to tell someone of the man he had loved above all else. Lumiere listened, and when the torrent of words had finally ceased to flow, put his arm around Cogsworth’s shoulders.

     “Forgive me,  _mon ami_ , I did not mean to give you pain,” he said. “He would be proud of you, your John, just as I am proud to call you friend.”

     And the burden of grief that Cogsworth had carried for nearly a decade eased, just a little.

     A week later, he found Ferrars’ picture in a new frame, not hidden in his sock drawer at all, but set upon the top of the dresser, in pride of place. A note in Lumiere’s hand sat beside it.

     “The ones we love watch over us, my mother always says, even when they are no longer with us. L.”

     Cogsworth smiled.

     The picture of John Ferrars, departed beloved, watched over Cogsworth for the rest of his days.

 

 

Author's Note: I did not intend to write Cogsworth angst when I sat down to Tumblr this evening, but the fine folks of Tumblr, having read the new Cogsworth chapter in "More Than Kin", wanted to know more about his lover. And so here we are. This is actually a first for me: I've never before written an LGBT+ love story, not because I didn't think it worthwhile, but because I wasn't certain I could do it justice. I really hope you all like it. Please let me know!

And the James I/George Villiers mention is accurate as far as the two of them being An Item (though they may or may not have been lovers, and were probably bi, as both married and had children. The 17th century was a bit more fluid about these things than later epochs). No law protecting same sex lovers was enacted in Britain, though, until fairly recently. 

The title is from Shakespeare's Henry V.


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